UN refugee chief says there is multiplication of new crises

An aerial view of the Dadaab refugee complex in north-east Kenya. The camps there house hundreds of thousands of Somali refugees.

It is becoming more difficult to find solutions for people around the world who are in a prolonged refugee situation, according to the head of the United Nations refugee agency (UNHCR).

Antonio Guterres on Thursday launched "The State of the World's Refugees" which, he said, is not a book about statistics but an analysis of the plight of refugees and the challenges of helping them.

He said new crises multiplied last year, creating the largest number of new refugees in the past decades.

Mr. Guterres identified what he described as three acute crises in Syria, South Sudan and Sudan, as well as Mali, not to mention the recent outflows of people from the Democratic Republic of the Congo to Rwanda and Uganda.

"As new crises multiply, old crises seem never to die. Afghanistan is there. Somalia is there. Democratic Republic of Congo is there. And so, 70 per cent of the world's refugees under UNHCR mandate plus all the Palestinian refugees are today in a protracted refugee situation, which means they have been refugees for more than five years and it's becoming more difficult to find solutions for them."